Police Boxes and Improbability Drives
by Hel-Lokisdotter
Summary: Zaphod is very good at breaking things. Especially shiny things with lots of buttons. Things like the TARDIS, for example... Somebody suggested it on Fandom!Secrets and I somehow ended up writing it. Ninth Doctor/HHGTTG crossover. ON INDEFINITE HIATUS until I can rewatch Nine's run.
1. Chapter 1

It was three-fifteen precisely, according to the clock on the _Heart of Gold_'s control panel (which was admittedly slightly unreliable, given the circumstances), on a day which was either a Monday or a Tuesday, when the blue police box appeared from thin air and landed on Zaphod.

"Fantastic!" The door opened, and a head appeared. It was balanced on a pair of shoulders, oddly enough, which was balanced on a body, which belonged to a rather dusty-looking man in a leather jacket. "Absolutely brilliant!"

"Yeah, I'm sure it's hoopy as anything," Zaphod's right head felt inclined to put in, "but right now, I'd kinda like it if you'd get off my body."

"Your little spaceship's a lot heavier than it looks," his left head added, nodding at the police box.

Trillian, who was standing by the controls, frowned. "I thought this cabin was meant to be improbability-proof?" she asked thin air.

"So did I, babe," Zaphod told her, as the skinny man leapt out of the police box. "Seems not."

"Improbability-proof?" the man asked excitedly, his eyes lighting up. "You mean, this ship..."

"Has an Improbility Drive, yes," Trillian said, without looking around.

"Fantastic!" The newcomer bounded over to her, grabbing her hand and pumping it. "That's fan_tas_tic! An IID? Already? I thought they weren't coming in for another century at least! Hi, I'm the Doctor, that's my TARDIS, and you are?"

Trillian quirked an eyebrow. "Are you from _Lancashire_?"

"England? Nah." The Doctor shrugged, still shaking her hand. "I'm from way away. A _looong_ way away. Sorry about the TARDIS, I sort of lost control a bit." He grinned, looking back at the police box. "Hey, that's not bad parking. For me."

Zaphod tugged the door open, one head peering around the edge. "Hoopy! Hey, Marvin, get this ship thing off me. I want to take a look."

The robot in the corner raised its head slowly, as though it weighed a great deal. "It doesn't look that interesting..." it said, in a voice a couple of shades below suicidal.

"Nobody asked _you_," Zaphod snapped, worming a foot or so further out into the open. "Just get it off me."

"Doesn't it all seem kind of... pointless?" Marvin queried in a tone of deep depression.

"Oh, for the love of God..." Zaphod rolled his eyes – all four of them – and folded his arms. "I'm not staying under here forever."

"I don't see why not," Marvin replied. "It can't be worse than staying out here forever."

"Look here, you rust-ridden piece of scrap metal..." Zaphod began angrily, and was two steps towards the robot before he realised that he wasn't under the TARDIS any more.

"You're not under the TARDIS any more," Marvin observed, monotonously. "I suppose you didn't need my help after all. Well, as I clearly don't have a use here, I shall be in the corner, contemplating the essential pointlessness of existence."

With that, he went and contemplated the essential pointlessness of existence on nine thousand different levels, and moved onto contemplating the essential pointlessness of his specific existence one thousandth of a second later.

Zaphod ignored him. He was already inside the TARDIS, prodding aimlessly at buttons and tugging levers. The Doctor and Trillian started towards the TARDIS doors within a split second of each other.

"Zaphod!"

"I really don't think you should..."

"Hey! This ship is _hoopy_!" Zaphod grinned, teeth flashing perfectly white, and yanked at a large, inviting lever.

There was a nasty, mechanical crunch somewhere deep in the workings of the machine. The Doctor grimaced, tugging the TARDIS door open and pulling Zaphod forcably away from the controls. As Trillian grabbed Zaphod's arm, steering him back out into the cabin, the Doctor dived under the control panel, fiddling with wires and thick cables. Somewhere along the line, the whirring, undulating column in the centre of the TARDIS had ground to a halt, and several dangerous-looking lights were flashing on what Trillian could only assume was the dashboard.

"Aw, you've gone and broken the rakidon generator!" the Doctor called from under the panels, emerging a moment later with a forlorn-looking piece of metal in his hand. Wires trailed from either end, blue sparks leaping from the twisted copper to the Doctor's arm and hanging there like dust. He didn't seem to notice. "She won't fly without that. Got a spare?"

Trillian gave the piece of metal a cursory glance. "Not that I know of. Can you get another one?"

The Doctor shrugged, shaking the clinging sparks off his arm and tucking the generator into his pocket. "Dunno. Where are we?"

"Just passing through ZZ-9-plural Z-alpha," she replied, after a quick glance at the dials.

"Okay, _when_ are we?"

"Tricky question. Earth years?"

"Sure."

"Good. I'm not. Nineteen-seventy-something?"

"Yeah, sounds about right." The Doctor nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets, and leant back against the doorway of the TARDIS. "Well, I got the right time for once. Not the right place, though. I was aiming for Earth. Ah, well. Win some, you lose some, right?"

Trillian shrugged and turned her attention back to the control panels, one hand absently holding onto Zaphod's collar as he attempted to bound back past the Doctor. "Sorry, what did you say your ship was called?"

"The TARDIS," the Doctor repeated patiently. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It's..."

"A police box," she finished for him. "Any idea where you can get one of those generators?"

"Not a clue," he said brightly. "And it's not a police box. The IPD went out, what, four, five hundred years ago, and..."

"IPD?" Zaphod asked, blinking. Trillian sighed, tapping one finger impatiently on a display screen.

"Look, fascinating as this conversation is..."

"Ooh, are those hitchhikers?" the Doctor interrupted, peering over her shoulder.

Zaphod pouted. "Trillian, we don't have time to pick up hitchhikers. We're desperados, on the run from the law, remember?"

"Oh," the Doctor said curiously, looking around at the sparklingly new interior of the _Heart of Gold_, "why?"

"We stole the ship," Trillian replied dully, without looking around.

"Isn't that _hoopy_?" Zaphod's faces broke into simultaneous grins of delight. "But it's shush-shush. _Trillian_."

Trillian shrugged. "Hey, it's not like it's obvious or anything," she replied, her voice drippingwith sarcasm. "This ship isn't at _all_ distinctive, after all." Leaning over the panel, she pressed a button, pulling the mic towards her.

Looking up at the display screen, the Doctor frowned. "I swear I've seen one of those guys before."

Shrugging again, Trillian tapped the base of the mike. "Two to the power of one thousand one hundred and one against," she said mildly, in a voice strikingly remeniscent of an air hostess, "and falling."


	2. Chapter 2

"So… Trillian, right? That's not an English name, is it? Are you English?" The Doctor was sitting in one of the plastic-covered seats, his feet up on the control panel, and sipping delicately from a polystyrene cup of a hot liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

"Islington," she nodded, then stood up and swatted at his legs. "Don't put your feet there! Jesus Christ, you're as bad as Zaphod!"

"You know you love me, babe." Zaphod left head smirked; his right head would no doubt have joined in, had it not been having its teeth picked at that precise moment in time. "Everyone does. I can't help myself."

Trillian ignored him. She'd got very good at ignoring him.

"So," she said, giving the Doctor a glare that dared him to put his feet up again. "A rakidon generator, huh? Where do you go for one of those?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't know."

"Yeah, he's one sassy frood," Zaphod commented, and giggled.

"I've never needed a spare before you came along," the Doctor shot back, taking another mouthful of mostly-un-teaish liquid. "I got that one on Gallifrey. Not really an option any more."

Trillian frowned. "Gallifrey? I've never heard of any Gallifrey."

"It never existed." The Doctor looked downcast for a moment, then shrugged and leapt to his feet, stretching. "Well, that's beside the point. Do my sharp ears detect the grumbling of an irritable robot?"

Turning to look at the displays, Trillian nodded. "Quite possibly," she agreed, as the Doctor leant over her shoulder to see the displays better. Behind them, Zaphod rolled his eyes, making the universal flapping-hand gesture which symbolises somebody who will not bloody well shut up.

_Ahhhhhh_… the door whispered contentedly. The Doctor and Trillian looked up sharply. Zaphod, on the other hand, who was still absorbed by his toothpick, simply took the chance to kick his own feet up onto a control panel and relax.

"I suppose you'll want to see the aliens now," Marvin said, in a tone of, if such a thing were possible, dedicated apathy. "Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?"

"The second one," Trillian muttered under her breath, wandering over to another control panel at the other end of the bridge.

"Yeah, just show them in, Marvin," Zaphod drawled, rather louder, and shot Trillian a Look which said _I agree with you totally. Well, maybe not totally, falling apart on the bridge would be messy, and then we wouldn't have a Marvin to clear it up. But I agree with you on the sentiment of the thing. You know. Mostly. _(Zaphod was noted for his expressive Looks, which had won several intergalactic awards)

The Doctor sat down again, picking up the not-really-tea-at-all, just as the hitchhikers stepped onto the bridge. By peeking around the TARDIS, which he had inconveniently managed to crashland right between his seat and the doors, he could just make out the newcomers.

"Ford," Zaphod drawled, raising a hand as though he couldn't be bothered at all, in any way, and continuing to pick his teeth, "hi, how are you? Glad you could…"

The Doctor spat his drink out, choking. "Ford? Ford _Prefect_?"

All three of the men (although only one of them was _technically_ a man, he was also the one who would be least inclined to deck you for implying otherwise) looked up sharply. Both of Zaphod's jaws dropped at once.

"You?" Ford said disbelievingly, as the Doctor bounded out from behind the TARDIS. "I _thought_ I'd seen that bloody blue box somewhere!" He looked the beaming Doctor up and down, and added thoughtfully, "Have you had a haircut?"

"You know this guy?" Zaphod demanded, abandoning all attempts at suave sophistication.

"You know this guy?" Arthur echoed, looking from Ford to the Doctor and back again with a face that resembled nothing more than a fish out of water – which, to be honest, was pretty much how he felt.

"Oh, we met _ages_ ago," the Doctor said breezily, "while he was reporting on Tjaden Six. Twenty years, right, Ford? I get confused."

"Twenty years," Ford agreed, nodding, "and have you got _young_! Did you have Botox?"

"Do I look like I had Botox?" the Doctor retorted, pulling at his face. "No, really, do I? I haven't looked in a mirror for a while. I'm not used to this face yet."

Arthur had gone, by now, rather pale. "You change your _face_?" he whimpered, sounding rather as though he would have preferred to be outside, drowning in the endless vacuum of space.

"Button it, monkey-man," Zaphod told him shortly, rubbing at his gum where he had driven the toothpick into it.

"You button it," Arthur snapped, and added snidely, "_Phil._"

"Phil?" Ford turned away from the incessantly complex secret handshake he was developing with the Doctor, and blinked at Arthur. "Nonononono, that's not Phil. Who the fuck's Phil? That's Zaphod. Za-phod. Zaphod Beeblebrox, my semi-cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox."

"Phil," Arthur persisted, glaring at Zaphod.

"What?" Zaphod demanded, as Ford and the Doctor both turned to stare at him. "_I_ don't know what he's on about. I'm Zaphod, not _Phil_. Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, sex magnet and all-around hoopy frood."

"Formerly known as Phil," Arthur agreed. "We've met."

"We have?"

"At a party."

Zaphod laughed. "Well, that narrows it down."

"Earth," Arthur persisted, "England."

Zaphod continued to look aggravatingly blank. Ford's face was rapidly darkening, and he looked about ready to strangle somebody.

"London. Islington."

"Oh," Zaphod said, nodding sagely, "_that_ party."

This was too much for Ford. "You were on the bloody planet? The same bloody _country_? What the hell were you doing?"

"Looking around," Zaphod replied calmly, at exactly the same time as a trembling Arthur snarled, "Gatecrashing parties."

"I was stuck on that planet for fifteen bloody years!" Ford shouted, shaking with rage.

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"

"What happened at the party?" the Doctor asked Arthur, by way of intervention.

"It was a fancy dress party," Arthur started, still furious.

"Of course it was," Ford muttered, looking Zaphod up and down. "Is that a new arm, by the way, Zaphod?" By way of reply, Zaphod waved his third arm sulkily, and went back to picking his teeth.

"It was a fancy dress party," Arthur repeated, "and there was this girl, Tricia. Tricia McMillan. Hell, she was something. Gorgeous, intelligent, absolutely bloody charming…"

"It's always nice to meet an admirer," Trillian remarked, wandering into view and over to another control panel.

For the second time in as many minutes, Arthur's jaw dropped.

"Tricia McMillan, I assume?" the Doctor said, when it became obvious that Arthur had been rendered functionally speechless. "Well, I suppose that explains the weird name, right? Isn't coincidence fan_tas_tic?"

"Most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers…" Trillian said quietly, and whistled. "Well, whaddaya know?"

"A lot, actually," Zaphod replied, and grinned.


End file.
